


one way or another

by Tobiko



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, everything is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiko/pseuds/Tobiko
Summary: The process of losing their memories takes about a day. A day to reflect, to rage, to cling to memories as hard as possible. A day to lose themselves.





	one way or another

**Q**

The potion tastes like blueberries as it’s forced down his throat, and Quentin knows he will never enjoy the taste of blueberries again. He can do nothing as he hears his friends gagging and choking on a potion none of them have agreed to take. “You will be different people, and know none of what you have done and who you have met,” Dean Fogg drawls. Quentin looks at his friends and sees the varying degrees of horror and rage. He can’t move, can’t reach out to them.

“We are not needlessly cruel, and we will allow you some input into who you will be.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Kady growls.

“Take them to the library catacombs for the process. There are enough rooms down there that we can keep them apart.”

“No, wait-” Quentin starts to protest, amidst yells and screams of his friends as they try to fight. The library Traveler starts to approach him and he tries to move, can only swivel his head and look at his friends. 

A quick glance at a horrified Alice still trapped at the other end of the room, Alice who was so sure and now looks like her heart is breaking. 

Eliot, tears in his eyes and remorse on his lips. 

Margo, lips peeled back in a snarl.

Josh, looking confused and helpless and afraid.

Penny, not even looking at him, all his attention on Julia.

Kady, muscles taught with her struggle to break free, as if she could tear magic apart with her bare hands.

And Julia. His Julia. Her eyes lock with his. She mouths something and Quentin knows without seeing the actual form of the words that it is “I love you”.

Then a hand on his shoulder and he’s in the dark.

.

The room he is placed in is stark white, a bed and nothing else. It’s either a  clean room, no magic, or the Library is already controlling what magic goes where, because he can’t make even a spark.

He had felt magic return, the glow in his skin, and then it had vanished just like that.

He paces because it’s all he can think to do. He paces and he wills himself to remember even as he feels the potion oozing through his veins. How did Julia remember? Never mind that this is different, never mind that this is rewriting everything he is. He hits his arm against a bedpost trying to leave a mark, a scar like Julia had made.

The first thing to go is his life with Eliot.

Already like a dream, wisps of memories of a life never lived, he grasps at them as hard as he can. He had a family. He had a life. He had a son. He had so much, and he had loved so well. But it fades and fades, the last image of Eliot old and gray and beautiful, and an instant later he does not know why he is muttering “peaches and plums” to himself over and over again.

People fade. Brakebills fades. Fillory, his home since he was nine years old, fades. He lets them go so he can hold onto his friends.

They are his home now and they fade just as everything else has.

Josh, always wanting to make people smile, make them happy, a round peg in a square hole.

Kady, who he knows most through the eyes of others, who helped Julia when he could (did) not.

Penny, his Penny not this new Penny with stranger’s eyes, Penny who hated him and who loved him, he knows this. Penny who is gone and may never return.

Margo, High King for a day and already beloved, who had made him a King of Fillory and who had understood him more than he had ever understood her. He regrets that in his bones.

Eliot, oh Eliot, his first friend in the magical world, his confidante, his mentor, always with something there under the surface, something they would get moments to touch but there was always something else happening, some disaster, some tragedy, that they had to deal with and could never just be.

Alice, who he’d brought back from another life, who was hard and soft, angry and sad, all the jagged pieces of her fitting to his own even when they were so far apart.

Julia. His partner in crime, his Jane, his _everything_ for so very long. Last to fade, he holds on to her smile, her laugh. Who is he without her?

Who is he?

**El**

Eliot knows it’s not his fault.

Eliot doesn’t know it’s not his fault.

He couldn’t leave Quentin there. He just couldn’t. Not to be alone forever, trapped with a monster who would want to possess him and never truly know or appreciate who Q is, how he tries. 

Would they have had time to get away if he had not shot it? Would Alice have had time to snort the fairy coke, take the keys? Would Julia have had to come, all Goddessed out, and make new ones just to turn magic back on? Would the Library have gotten to them in time?

What if, what if.

He doesn’t want to forget them. He doesn’t want to lose them.

Funny enough, it doesn’t even occur to him that he will forget Bambi. This thought is so unfathomable it doesn’t cross his mind until memories of her start to slip.

When they do, his eyes widen, he SCREAMS indignation. “YOU SONS OF WHORES, GIVE THEM BACK, GIVE HER BACK!” He loves them, he loves Quentin, but Bambi is his one true love, the one in a million kind. He beats his fists against the door, yelling, then begging, then crying. 

“Don’t take her, please.”

He passes out before she is completely gone, and it’s a small mercy.

**Margo**

Margo kicks and bites and screams as soon as she can move, and it doesn’t help. She prowls her room, screaming Eliot’s name over and over again in the hopes that he will hear her, that he will remember her.

“You cocksucking motherfucker if you forget me I will NEVER FORGIVE YOU!” she rails. What she means is that if she forgets him, she will never forgive herself.

Her fairy eye gives her feedback that is largely useless because she can barely understand it. Wards are sharp and blue like when they fall, and bursts of color show up for no apparent reason. She tries to understand, tries to work with it because it’s all she has, and nothing happens.

“El! ELIOT! I swear to fucking god I’ll FIND YOU. Don’t you dare die! Don’t you dare! EL!” 

Her voice gives out long before her mind does. Her last image is of Eliot kissing her hand, eyes full of adoration and love, saying, “Long may you reign.”

**Josh**

It hurts, a little, seeing the others exchange desperate, pleading looks and not being as included in them. He knows they’re his friends, but they’re so entwined to each other, he’s still on that periphery. Still looking in.

But in the end, maybe that makes the process for him less painful. Less earth shattering.

He thinks that he might have fully integrated in, one day, and is sad that will never come to pass. He truly does love them. And he respects them all like crazy even if they’re all fucking insane messes. He never thought he’d be the most sane one in a group. Wild.

He’s also kind of pissed that the librarians ignore him and don’t ask for input on his new life. Rude.

Josh hopes the others are doing okay. They must be so freaked. He can’t even imagine how some of them are feeling at this point.

His last thought is “Oh fuck, I never found out what The Quickening is”.

**Penny**

Penny feels bad that he doesn’t care about anyone but Julia.

He knows that Kady loved the other him, but he doesn’t know her. He also knows this Julia doesn’t know him, but he loves her despite this. He isn’t even hurt when he sees her searching eyes seeking out everyone but him. Especially this world’s Q and this world’s Kady. He can’t help hating this Q, even though he’s not the same. His Q got his Julia killed. But the devotion isn’t unfamiliar. He’d seen the same look on his Julia’s face plenty of times. 

He wonders how their Penny is doing. He can’t imagine being trapped in the Underworld. But he gets why Penny 40 did it. He did it for the person he loved most. Penny 23 would have done it for Julia. Any Julia.

He doesn’t like thinking of Julia in tears, her memories slowly being wiped. 

He sits and he closes his eyes and he waits.

**Kady**

Kady manages to headbutt a librarian hard enough that blood gushes from his nose and into her hair. It’s not enough to save her, but it’s enough to fill her body with a lightning strike of pride before that fades and she’s back to the terror of forgetting.

Forgetting her mom. Forgetting Julia. Forgetting Penny, the real Penny.

The idea of forgetting them is like a knife to the gut.

It’s crazy to her that some days she’s thought it would be better to just forget them all and move on. How could she have ever wanted that? How could she have for a second thought she should forget them and be happy? Remembering is painful, but they are part of her, irrevocably, and losing them was losing pieces of herself.

Like Free Trader Beowulf, like losing her mother all over, permanently.

Kady clutches her best bitches necklace half in her fist. She hasn’t worn it in a long time but she’s kept it. It doesn’t work without magic. She’s told herself she’ll throw it away so many times but it has never left her pocket for long.

She wants to hear her Penny’s voice one last time. She can picture it. “I love you. I’m sorry we’re cursed.” The last time she looked into his eyes.

When she is gone, will he remember her in the Underworld? Will he wonder about her? When she dies, will she remember him again? 

 _Please_ don’t let this be an eternity of not knowing the people she loves. **Please** don’t take them away from her forever.

**Jules**

Forgetting is not unknown to Julia. She was forced to forget Brakebills. She was forced to forget magic. She had fought tooth and nail to remember and it had nearly destroyed her.

Being immobile, helpless, is not unknown to Julia. She was a goddess and now she’s not. She gave up everything for her people, and now she is unable to save them from this. She tries to move toward anyone but she can’t, and bad memories bloom in her mind as she looks at Kady, thinking, “Kady, go!” But this is different. They will live.

And they will forget.

She locks eyes with Quentin. “I love you,” she says, knowing she won’t be heard over the yells of her friends. Knowing he will know.

Besides Alice, she is the last taken from the castle. The benevolent energy she had felt as a goddess is fading and she glares at Dean Fogg. She almost says, “I should have left you blind”, but she knows she never would have.

“You lost your powers.”

“I gave them up for magic. For you and all Magicians. How could you do this?”

“There are factors, Julia, that you do not know.”

“I was a goddess. I knew.”

“Not everything.”

Julia shakes her head. “You’re making a mistake.”

.

Julia paces, almost an echo of the movements that Quentin is making in a room too far away for them to hear one another. She can feel the potion working and she fights hard, harder than she even did to remember Brakebills.

Her time as a goddess is gone in a blink.

Her time Shadeless takes longer.

Why does it take so long for Reynard to fade?

But soon she’s grasping at her friends. Eliot and Margo fade, moments with them flickering and gone.

Penny fades, and she has a moment to feel bad that he will never mean to her what she meant to him.

Josh, who she had an adventure with, who only ever met her after she had been to her lowest low and climbed out.

Alice, how they’re so much alike, and how they’re different. Julia worries for her, sends out a final prayer that someone will look after her, that Alice won’t live with her regret as a heavy weight for the rest of her life. She knows guilt. 

Kady. Her best bitch, her friend when she had no one. Kady assuring her she wasn’t alone. Kady holding her hand. Kady wrapping her arms around her. Kady loving her even when she barely loved herself.

Quentin. Her Quentin, her other half. She could feel him, sharp and warm, even as a goddess. His emotions. His heart. She grinds her teeth and holds on to Q for longer than anything, longer than should be possible. Her nails dig into her palms and she holds onto him, holds-

_“Jules.”_

He is gone. She is gone.

**Alice**

Alice remembers. Alice is the only one left. She remembers and she worries and she regrets. Where are they now? Who are they now?

She wasn’t always one of them, wasn’t always a part in a way that worked. But she could have been. She should have been.

Alice has lost them and she can barely breathe.

She wishes she could forget.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](https://changelingfray.tumblr.com/post/172745687101/wait-so-it-took-a-full-day-for-all-their-memories)
> 
> Forgive me


End file.
